Another adventure in the beautiful country of Italy! On the way to and from work Jake said he keeps seeing a 'castle' on a hillside. So, we looked into it and found out it was the Dongione - Castle of Motta Sant'Anastasia. As soon as we figured out where it was we decided to take a quick trip there to see it before dinner time. So glad we did, it was amazing! When we first got to this little city of Sant'Anastasia we were not sure we would make it through the city in our car. The streets were the tiniest we have seen and there were cars parked right on the street too making it extra tiny. On the way up the road to the watch tower, it was clearly only big enough for one person to go one way, we ended up coming upon someone who was trying to come down and we were trying to go up. He backed up enough that we could duck into a little alley way (typing it makes it sound easy, it wasn't) and then they went by, we backed back out and got up to the castle to find that there was a funeral going on in the chapel that was right there...oops. Talk about poor timing. We found a parking spot, by some miracle and decided to just go around the back for a while because the funeral was just ending and we didn't want to be in the way. We got to hear the bell tower ringing so that was a fun treat. It was so windy and cold up there that we figured we might not stay very long, but decided to take in some of the sites first. It was a beautiful clear day, even though it was windy.

We started on the back side of the tower and it is no wonder they built something right there, you could see FOREVER. We decided to go around to the other side to see that way and discovered a door to the watch tower. It had 'free admission' on the door so we decided to head on in, one to get out of the wind and two to see what was in there. We are so glad we did. It was really cool. There was the welcoming room with lots of chairs set up and a big TV. The nice little lady had learned the few phrases that were needed to help us get the movie going in English and that was the extent of her English, but at least we got to watch the 10 minute movie about the watch tower's history. It was very neat. The cliffs that this tower was built on where created by the volcano long ago when there was a lake in this area. It didn't have enough power to erupt all the way out of the water but it created these cliffs and when the water went away it made a perfect look out for an army! You could see everywhere in every direction and would immediately know if someone was coming to battle.

There were a set of stairs, so we asked if we could go up and the kids were so excited with what they saw. Real swords, daggers, spears, helmets, chain battle gear, rings, examples of 14th and 15th century dress, toys, dolls and so many other things. It was amazing how many things they had on display. They even had papers explaining what everything was in English! Yahoo! It ended up being a really cool excursion to this little tower. I didn't get a picture of it, but it even had a HUGE cistern below it that used to hold their water and it was quite large. They also would throw prisoners in there too. The kids really liked this place, almost as much as I did!